We spent the week talking with designers, illustrators, educators, and other creative professionals from across the country about why they keep coming back year after year, what makes Creative South different, and whether creative conferences are actually worth the investment.

The conversations drift from creative burnout and imposter syndrome to bizarre conspiracy theories, typography pet peeves, client stories, and the weirdly specific things only designers care about.

But underneath it all is a bigger conversation about community.

Why creative work can feel isolating, and how getting in a room with other creative people can completely reset your perspective.

Whether you attended Creative South this year, have always wanted to go, or have never been to a creative conference at all, this episode is a candid look at what these events really offer beyond the workshops and keynote talks.

Because often, the most valuable part of a conference isn’t the speakers. It’s the conversations in the halls and late-night hangs.

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Click here to get the five-part “Off the Record” email series

Note: If you're looking for hard-earned advice, resources from top creatives, and the products they can't live without, you're going to love this.

Brad Woodard

Brad is an illustrator and designer behind Brave the Woods, a full-service studio working with clients like PBS Kids, Ford, Target, and USPS. His bold, playful style and heart-led storytelling shine through everything from brand campaigns to children’s books.

View Brave the Woods

Dustin Lee

Dustin is the founder of RetroSupply, a shop for retro-inspired brushes, textures, and digital tools used by tens of thousands of creatives from indie artists to major studios. He shares what it’s really like to run a creative business while keeping it small, weird, and intentional.

View RetroSupply

Credits

Audio/video editing: Clara Wright
Cover art: Brad Woodard
Intro animation: Seth Austin
Intro music: “Snakes and Fire” (Instrumental) by Pär Hagström

In this episode, we sit down with Trust Design, a two-person studio run by Hannah Smith and Jesse MacKenzie, to talk about how they’ve built a reputation for delivering big-agency-level work—without becoming a big agency.

They share how they stumbled into starting a studio (with no clear roadmap), why they rejected the idea that design has to be cutthroat, and how discovering the creative community completely changed their trajectory.

We also dig into their philosophy of “punching above your weight.” What it actually looks like in practice, and why it has less to do with talent and more to do with care.

Along the way, we talk about:

• Why most creatives underestimate how much presentation matters
• The hidden advantage of not acting like a traditional agency
• How to build trust with clients before you even start the project
• Why being “in-house in spirit” changes everything

If you’ve ever felt like you’re too small to compete (or unsure how to stand out without a massive following) this episode is proof that you don’t need scale to do meaningful, high-level work.

Join the Creative Slash Newsletter and Get the 5-Part “Off the Record” email series FREE

Click here to get the five-part “Off the Record” email series

Note: If you're looking for hard-earned advice, resources from top creatives, and the products they can't live without, you're going to love this.

Brad Woodard

Brad is an illustrator and designer behind Brave the Woods, a full-service studio working with clients like PBS Kids, Ford, Target, and USPS. His bold, playful style and heart-led storytelling shine through everything from brand campaigns to children’s books.

View Brave the Woods

Dustin Lee

Dustin is the founder of RetroSupply, a shop for retro-inspired brushes, textures, and digital tools used by tens of thousands of creatives from indie artists to major studios. He shares what it’s really like to run a creative business while keeping it small, weird, and intentional.

View RetroSupply

Credits

Audio/video editing: Clara Wright
Cover art: Brad Woodard
Intro animation: Seth Austin
Intro music: “Snakes and Fire” (Instrumental) by Pär Hagström

At some point in your creative career, the stakes shift.

We go from just making stuff… to overthinking. Obsessing. Optimizing. And it sucks the the fun out of the entire thing.

In this episode, we talk with illustrator and designer Mikey Burton about that shift. And honestly, it's refreshing, like talking to a design monk who makes everything feel like it's going to be okay.

From editorial work on Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to building a career across studios, freelance, and printmaking, Mikey shares a perspective that cuts through a lot of the noise around “getting better” as a creative.

We talk to Mikey about staying loose, staying human, and building a career without sanding off the parts that made your work interesting in the first place, including:

• The sweet spot. That moment before you fully “master” something is often where your best work lives
• Fight over-polishing. Why the final version is often worse than the sketch (and what gets lost in the process)
• Be more human. In a world of AI and optimization, why leaning into imperfection might be your biggest advantage.
• Sharing vs performing. How the shift from gatekeepers to social media changed what it means to “put work out there.”
• Careers aren’t linear. How timing, visibility, and just sticking around long enough still matter more than people admit

Later in the episode, Mikey talks about everything from building a body of work over years (not weeks), to why printing in his “basement dungeon” keeps things grounded, to the strange reality of contributing to something culturally massive without it being your “purest” creative expression.

Listen to this. By the time you're done you'll feel some fresh creative energy flowing through your spirit.

Hey, check out Mikey Burton!

View Mikey Burton's website here

Follow Mikey Burton on Instagram here

Buy his Pile O' Prints here (Brad and I did, and it's 100% pure awesome)

Join the Creative Slash Newsletter and Get the 5-Part “Off the Record” email series FREE

Click here to get the five-part “Off the Record” email series

Note: If you're looking for hard-earned advice, resources from top creatives, and the products they can't live without, you're going to love this.

Brad Woodard

Brad is an illustrator and designer behind Brave the Woods, a full-service studio working with clients like PBS Kids, Ford, Target, and USPS. His bold, playful style and heart-led storytelling shine through everything from brand campaigns to children’s books.

View Brave the Woods

Dustin Lee

Dustin is the founder of RetroSupply, a shop for retro-inspired brushes, textures, and digital tools used by tens of thousands of creatives from indie artists to major studios. He shares what it’s really like to run a creative business while keeping it small, weird, and intentional.

View RetroSupply

Credits

Audio/video editing: Clara Wright
Cover art: Brad Woodard
Intro animation: Seth Austin
Intro music: “Snakes and Fire” (Instrumental) by Pär Hagström